Miko and Me: What's A Viking Fan Doing In Packer Country? Keeping A Low Profile, Of Course

Wisconsin – land of Packer Fans, suicidal bugs and more roundabouts than you could ever imagine. I guess we can explain the bugs – it is early fall and these bugs are probably thinking I would rather go out in a blaze of glory on her windshield than slowly freeze to death in the coming winter. I suppose I can maybe even understand the Packer Fans (I'm just a little bit south of Green Bay) but Roundabouts? Why in the world would you put three roundabouts in the middle of a tiny little road going thru corn fields? This is not an isolated situation – they are all over the place. Why? Why? Why?

Ok, enough of that. I drove a couple of hours and ended up in the town of Wausau. They have a lovely urban county park there called Marathon County Park. It is nestled in a pine/oak grove and has a walking path around and through the trees. It is also across the street from a grocery store and a Shopko where I could pick up all the things that I forgot to pack for my fall trip.

After resting up overnight after that strenuous drive, I drove another couple of hours to High Cliff State Park. It is in the Appleton, Neenah area on the northeast shore of Lake Winnabago. Lake Winnebago is the largest lake in Wisconsin. It is bigger than Mille Lacs lake for all you Minnesotans following along. The campground is lovely – all of the sites are good sized and in the trees. The campground is on the cliffs overlooking the lake – can't see the lake, but that is what they tell me.

I decided to do an evening hike on the Lime Kiln trail leaving from the campground. There were several signs which said that this was a primitive trail – only people in good shape should attempt it. Well, that is definitely not me, but I'm going anyways. It was a fun trail – going from the top of the cliffs, down to the lake, along the lake which was flat and easy and then back up the cliff. Sweated a bit, got lost a bit but I had a nice glow of accomplishment.

On the way down

I also did the Butterfly Trail which was a paved trail around a butterfly shaped pond. Pleasant, but I realized that I enjoy much more the wilderness trails. Tripping over roots and rocks adds a certain challenge and I find that there is much more of a sense of peace that you don't get walking on pavement. Must be that direct physical connection to Mother Earth or something.

I love this memorial RIP Jean

I visited an exquisite museum in Neenah. It is the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass. This museum has the world's largest, most representative collection of glass paperweights in the world. Holy cow – I spent hours here looking at the different paperweights. There were also a few other exhibits of different types of contemporary glass sculptures which were enjoyable. I think I liked this glass museum better than the Corning Museum of Glass that I saw in New York last year. Outstanding exhibits and yes, I did buy a couple of paperweights. It's art, right?

The following are all made of glass:

This was called Scorpio

Up in Appleton, there is the Trout Museum of Art. They had an interesting origami exhibit – in fact the bottom two floors were Origami by Robert Lang. For part of the exhibit, a photographer took a picture of a flower and then Lang recreated the image using just one uncut sheet of paper. All of his work is done with just one uncut sheet of paper. That is the amazing thing.